The future of libraries
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Presentation at ALIA Online 2015 conference on Future of public libraries and the drivers for change
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The future of libraries
- 1. The Future of Public Libraries Jane Cowell @janecowell8 jane.cowell@slq.qld.gov.au
- 4. Top 5 global trends • Growing wealth inequality • Persistent jobless growth • Lack of leadership • Rising geostrategic competition • The weakening of representative democracy
- 5. Move away from: • Being busy to drive activity Move to: • Intentional activity with partners that makes a difference based on evidence
- 6. Key Drivers • Australia is 83% connected • Mobile Technology, Mobile ID, Mobile payment • Flexibility for the individual • More Integration, collaboration & connection is possible
- 7. Our customers • Well connected • Empowered • Ready to learn • Want to share • Want to create
- 9. The current state of play… 35000000 36000000 37000000 38000000 39000000 40000000 41000000 42000000 165,000,000 170,000,000 175,000,000 180,000,000 185,000,000 190,000,000 2008/2009 2009/2010 2010/2011 2011/2012 2012/2013 Total Loans Australia vs Qld 2008/2009 - 2012/2013 Australia Queensland
- 10. An unsophisticated forecaster uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for support rather than for illumination. Andrew Lang
- 11. TARDIS: It’s the experience not the content
- 12. Soooooooo hard Library Customer Experience
- 13. Our customers have changed • Find information instantly • Busy but check things out • They will walk away – especially from traditional institutions • Want us to listen to them • Will switch allegiances • Rely on 3rd party reviews and ratings
- 14. Orientate Outward • Vision – encompass a higher purpose • Values – include our community • Make bold claims and act on them • Make it easy for outside partners to work with you
- 15. Get started • Hold community conversations and listen • Delve deeper into the evidence • Seek outside partners to work with you on the solution
- 16. Community gets to have input • Reposition your work practices • Remove those processes that are a barrier • Collaborate with the community • Allow the community in – with intent
- 17. Every child a reader • Early literacy space – claim it, own it • Intentionally improve parental skills • Build own professional skills • Do this in partnership • Stake a bold claim
- 18. Wider research findings • Make the public part of what we do • Become central to community well- being • Beyond digitisation – creative re-use • Develop funding for strategic initiatives Innovation Study: Challenges and Opportunities for Australia’s Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums. CSIRO September 2014
- 20. Contact • e: margaret.warren@slq.qld.gov.au • p: 3840 7803
- 23. Fundamental disruption • Move from • Curation, information providers • Move to • Enabling for creation, learning and innovation • With • Collaborative & personalized approach
- 24. #noexcuses • Trust our customer – let them join • Personalized loan periods • Never turn a child away • Find ways to let community choose • Be intentional • Get out of the library
Editor's Notes
- The digital transformation the world is undergoing affects all aspects of our lives. Business, social, education, recreation and according to CSIRO signifies the death of the Industrial revolution where the defining driver was mass production.
- The digital revolution creates a platform for personalised production, greater connection and collaboration – with our customer and each other. Creating a future for public libraries requires us to ask the big questions and understand the barriers our users face to better their lives – not the barriers that face them using the library.
- What are the big questions facing our region? According to the UN the top 5 global trends are: read slide Libraries can respond to these global trends by investigating collaboration and partnerships to provide the solutions at a local level. Education, increased creativity, innovation, taregeted job skills, improved business skills, are all solutions to these trends and are areas that public libraries can play an important role in to make a difference at the community level. Staking a claim in changing people’s lives at a very real level assures that we do not have a future as the museum of the book but an active future creating better lives, better communities and better organisations that we are a part of.
- We need to be much more intentional about the choices that we make so that we can have a far greater impact. Its not about doing everything, but about doing those things that will make the biggest difference.
- Other key drivers we need to be aware of: read slide
- Look beyond satisfaction and performance measures that support our inward focus. Our statistics are all about us, Our strategic visions are about delivering a more cost efficient library, or best customer service, with a big BUT as we deliver these services on our terms with our rules – made with the 97% - 3% rule.
- Is this our kodak moment? Libraries look at this slide and think about how to promote their collections of books. We are not about lending books. We are about changing peoples lives. Tell the story of Library Dividend findings – 96% did take out a book but the reason they came to libraries – overwhelmingly – was to help them with their hobby, to learn something, help them in their lives, - it is just at this point in time it was a book that helped them do that. In today’s world more and more it is YouTube that helps them do this. Tell the story about libraries helping the community to actually do, make and create stuff. Libraries loaning plots of land for a community interested in gardening (not just give out seeds or collection items but help them actually garden), loaning sewing machines for those interested in learning to sew, overwhelming response to creating stuff
- Currently we use statistics to prove the status quo – you may be thinking that library visits are going up and the community loves us so that our business proposition is okay as is.
- Cracking open the institution of the library to allow the individual to determine how, when where and who they engage with and give them the power to shape their own library experience will require us to rethink our vision, reframe our policies and reposition our services. And for those who work within libraries this is a great challenge to our way of working. For when an institution actively works to become people centred and outward facing, control moves to the customer. And this letting go is the challenge that becomes our greatest opportunity.
- On my travels throughout Australia I talk to people about their library experiences. From taxi drivers, Professors, Doctors, accountants, engineers, miners I get a variety of answers. Oh, they all like us but the common denominator of all their initial experiences with their library is this: It was soooooo hard The Professor of Medicine who migrated from Britain who tried to join her local library – it was harder than getting a driver’s licence and getting a bank card. It was sooooo hard. The Accountant who tried to download an audiobook from her local library – I could not even find it on their website – I had to google it and then it was sooooo hard. The 14 year old High School student loudly chastised and humiliated at the public library desk whose 6 books were confiscated because her family owed fines. It was sooooo hard. The retiree who joined the library for the first time and made to line up 5 times in different lines to get the one book she wanted on reservation as the signup process did not allow reservations to be made immediately. It was soooooo hard. And when I talk to the library staff from these libraries they pride themselves on their customer service, adherence to the one size fits all rules, and that they are there for the disadvantaged within their community. Never once experiencing the library from the customer side of the desk.
- Our customers have changed. They can find information instantly, anywhere anytime. They are very busy but check things out, usually with other customer feedback on social networks, and they will walk away – especially from traditional institutions. They want us to listen to them and will switch allegiances quickly if they feel we are unresponsive. They totally ignore online advertising but do look for 3rd party reviews and ratings. This is a more powerful driver for change than the digital tools that enabled this power shift to happen and we must shift our thinking outward to respond to our new customers. If we truly put the individual customer at the centre of our service and personalise our services this will totally transform how we operate and engage.
- To successfully orientate our libraries outward we need to start with our vision. It needs to shift to encompass a higher purpose and articulate the contribution the library makes to enable a better world for the residents in our communities. Our values also need to include our community and partners. Its not about us. We need to make bold claims and intentionally act on them. Outwardly facing libraries take deliberate actions to make it easier for the outside world to work with them. A good start is to hold community conversations and listen to what they are saying. Delve deeper into the evidence of what is facing your community – look at census trends, analyse membership data against postcodes and socio-economic data to enable intentional choices regarding solving community issues.
- Repositioning our work practices, policies and procedures to deliberately remove barriers and to make it easier for the outside world to collaborate with us is also key to focusing outward. Working with the community, not doing to or for the community, means that the community gets to choose and collaborate with the library to achieve improved community outcomes.
- One such outcome that libraries are totally positioned to own is for Every child to be a reader! Libraries can own the Early Literacy space and drive this in partnership with all other service providers in our communities and intentionally become very professional in this space. Its not just storytime but move to intentionally improve parental skills around vocabulary, literacy and early childhood development for Under fives in partnership with all the service providers in this area to ensure we reach the hard to reach families. This is not about doing it alone. Then measure the difference made and shout about it to all who have funds. This has worked for Western Australia with their Better Beginnings program and in Queensland with the Best Start program, both attracting millions of dollars over a number of years. Claim this place. If we are intentional about this vision then our policies and procedures must change to eliminate barriers for children accessing the library. No child should be turned away even if we think the book will not come back.
- The recent Innovation Study: Challenges and Opportunities for Australia’s Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums undertaken by CSIRO published in September 2014 made the following recommendations. 1.Making the public part of what we do Many felt a deep reluctance within the sector to let go of the traditional position of authority among curators, librarians and archivists and a simultaneous reluctance for organisations to become genuinely more porous to outside contributors and collaborators. This initiative, involving a fundamental shift to open access, open sharing and greater collaboration with the public aims to effect this shift. 2. Becoming central to community wellbeing Make the wellbeing of individuals and communities a deliberate and central part of each organisation’s purpose and vision. The focus is on both the value of the physical spaces as community centres, but also on the role the collections can play in fostering community memory, sense of self and pride, to the economy, and to community health and resilience as our population both ages and becomes more diverse. 3. Beyond digitisation – creative reuse Shift the conversation from the difficulties of digitisation to possibilities of creative reuse. Many participants perceived the need to transition from a “push” to a “pull” model where publics are engaged from the beginning and help pull through digitised content based on specific needs, which shapes the form of digitisation and allows for creative reuse. Digitisation is about preservation, use and reuse to build cycles of creativity in which new or reshaped digital objects join the ‘collection’. 4. Developing funding for strategic initiatives With the expected constraints in support from government, there is a need to transform the basis of funding towards philanthropy, partnerships with the corporate sector and direct support from the wider community. The growing expectation from the public for easy and seamless access to Australia’s distributed national collection, the pressures of the operating environment and similarities in the digital practice of GLAM organizations make cross-sector collaboration more obviously crucial for innovation, resource and knowledge sharing. CSIRO, 2014 Pp viii
- So the future of libraries is exciting, bright and everchanging. For me the key to the future is to collaborate more with each other. The one library card initiatives in South Australia, Northern Territory and possibly Victoria are showing the way for limitless access to shared collections across the State. This is essential as access is not location or time dependedent in a digital world and this makes it easier for our customers, who we exist for, to access us. No longer making it soooo hard to use our services. But we need to go further.
- The defining line between school libraries, public libraries, university libraries exists in our funding models. But what if we ignored that and enabled a discovery layer to access all the local, State and National catalogues for the user, be that student, school student, or community member.
- A discovery layer that was personalised to my interests, needs, and location. A discovery layer that anticipated my needs and also linked me to local community events that I was interested in. A discovery layer that connected me to people of like interests, to content that I could be interested in, to the community I lived in
- PERSONALISED DISCOVERY It’s all about you. Based on your profile, who you follow and borrowing history, you receive personally tailored content. . A limitless library – it only requires our will to make this happen.
- We need to seek a fundamental disruption to revolutionary new services to be sustainable. Our future is not about making incrementatal improvements to our services but about challenging existing service models and developing completely new ones. Changing the fundamental definition of our profession and services from curation, information providers with a one size fits all approach to one that enables communities and people to create, learn, and innovate with a collaborative and personalized approach will not be easy.
- No excuses – we do have the power it is up to us to have the will to change.
- Be bold with our claims and visioning Porous seams between different library types – just because our funding models are different does not mean that our communities are that different – work with each other, let each of our audiences in – share stuff Focus outward Be mobile Its up to us to create a perfect future.